A Chaska children’s boutique’s high-profile drag queen story time drew a supportive crowd Saturday morning regardless of protests.

The event drew attention after the shop’s owner posted a video on TikTok of an offended customer arguing that it promoted sexual entertainment for kids. The video received greater than 500,000 likes and hundreds of comments supporting Little Roos.

Darcie Baumann, who helped run the event, said partly as a consequence of all these threats, the shop was prepared when members of the right-wing extremist group the Proud Boys showed up on Saturday and shouted at attendees.

Police and members of Minneapolis-based security team Sequeerity helped keep the peace, Baumann said.

“We’re very lucky to be on private property and have the support of the property manager, and we weren’t going to interact,” Baumann said. “Any attention that we give them is just fueling that fireside.”

But what wasn’t expected was the 200-strong crowd that packed the shop to create colourful chalk art and listen to drag queen Miz Diagnosis read two children’s books. Little Roos owner Marissa Held-Nordling said they weren’t in a position to fit everyone in the shop.

“There have been so much more people here than we were anticipating. But we were lucky to have numerous volunteers to assist crowd control and keep the traffic flowing,” Held-Nordling said. “We had so many tiny fingers here, drawing in every single place, leaving great messages.”

Baumann added the event’s success shows progress within the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“We have now at all times been in your community,” Baumann said. “It was that when you got here out, you moved to the town. They wish to stay where they’ve grown up, and so they should have the opportunity to. And to have this and to know that adults are around that support them is wonderful.”

Held-Nordling said Little Roos plans to host more drag queen story time events within the near future.